The Neighbor of the Beast
by SSJ-Alhazred
Summary: The motley crew of badly damaged Titan667 thought PanAsia was done with the Titan Graveyard, Shuhia Taiba. Not quite.


**The Neighbor of the Beast  
**Alhazred - ssjDOTalhazredATgmailDOTcom - alhazredDOTlivejournalDOTcom

_Based on __Battlefield 2142__ © DICE and EA._

"That man...should not be in combat."

Ordinarily, infantrymen didn't talk to their squad leaders so frankly. Being on a battlefield was a pretty large tax on 'ordinary,' though. Being on a battlefield fighting to kill people so your own people could have their food made it even worse.

Being on that battlefield with no more reinforcements and only a few soldiers left...well, that just made it peachy-keen. Corporal Sheffard glanced down at the man his subordinate was talking about, and then back. It wasn't hard to be inconspicuous; the object of their attention was on the lower cargo deck of Titan-667, they were on the maintenance deck above. Ostensibly to check the claymores planted near the vents, but really just to be outside in the fresh air while having a smoke.

At Sheffard's lack of a response, Private Calhoun brought that topic up. "Give me a turn with that fag, will you?"

Ever since their _actual_ squad leader had taken more than a few bullets from an automated turret, Sheffard had never begrudged 'his' squad their current informality. Granted, it was only two days ago, and at this point he simply thought that reigning in the discipline would do less to maintain a cohesive unit and more to stress the men to the breaking point, given the way the fight had been going. "How twenty-first century of you. Here." Handing over his cigarette, he added, "Take the rest."

It was a bad habit, really. He felt guilty about smoking while the world was in the throes of an ice age; it wasn't nearly as bad as, say, getting up from the dinner table with half a plate of food left. But still.

Eventually, between drags, Calhoun broached the subject again. "So...what about _him?_"

"What _about_ him," Sheffard shrugged, glancing at their helmets on the deck. He'd used his knife to card his name over their old commander's on the back; he just didn't feel right going into combat under the pretense of someone who had already died for them. Knowing it looked like he was just being self-centered, he found that he didn't really care that everyone would misinterpret it. "He's a good soldier. You saw him fuck up the Pancakes around that missile."

"I'm not arguing that," Calhoun deadpanned. "Guy's a hell of a shot for a yank, but christ, just look at him."

Glancing down at the cargo deck again, Sheffard paid closer attention to Private Jackson. Sitting on his crate, his sniper rifle huddled in both arms, the big American was visibly shaking. It showed most on his rifle, the barrel gibbering back and forth every few seconds. He wondered how long Jackson had sat there, staring at the hillside over the guardrail.

"I know," Sheffard sighed. "He's fucked up good. You notice I'm not asking him to drive something. As long as he can hold a gun..."

"I know, I know, as long as he can hold a gun. I just worry he'll forget who he's supposed to be holding it _at,_" Calhoun admitted.

It was a bit of a no-brainer, but Calhoun was talking like it was thirty years ago and armies could afford such luxuries. He didn't know the specifics of Jackson's life, didn't know the details of what had driven him to breaking. He knew the man was American and had been in the armed forces in his own country until the ice had turned him into a refugee after the south had become full. He knew Jackson must've lost everything to have joined the European Union army and fight someone else's enemy while the rest of his country sat back, sold them all weapons and got rich off of their war to survive.

He wondered if Americans even knew, if the media over there even bothered to mention how many of their brothers were fighting against Pan-Asia just to have food and clothes and sometimes even shelter. He wondered how many were fighting _for_ the Pancakes, but no one ever thought about that.

Most of all, he wondered about Jackson's combat record before he'd been assigned to Titan-667. When Sheffard had first met the man, he was already showing signs of combat fatigue. Shuhia Taiba hadn't helped, but it couldn't have been anything except the last straw.

Promising himself he would try to talk to Jackson and at least try to make him feel better, Sheffard mentally noted that he had now made this promise eighteen times. He had so far broken it seventeen times, counting this latest instance of making it. "Not much to do about it."

"Right," Calhoun finished the cigarette, tossing it over the side of the Titan without so much as a second thought. It was gone just like that, making the seventy-five foot drop to the ground they were hovering above. "You know what 'Shuhia Taiba' means?"

"No," Sheffard blinked. If Jackson was losing it, maybe Calhoun already had and showed it through randomness instead of the shakes. "Do you?"

"'Enjoy your meal,'" Calhoun laughed. "Which makes sense, I guess. Did you know none of the scrap across the valley is going to stop it? Assuming we hold onto it, that is, food production will be normal as soon as the civilians come back to work?"

"Huh," Sheffard took a brief look over the guardrail. From only twenty-five meters up, nestled against a hill, the Titan didn't provide much of a vista, but it was enough to see the husks of at least three dead Titans across the ground. "No wonder there wasn't any food growing when we got here. I remember hearing it's all-underground, beneath the field. They control the temperature."

"Yep," Calhoun said.

"Almost makes me glad I'm here," Sheffard said. "Almost."

He wondered if the _Africans_ were glad they were here. They had to be; America wasn't going to be a haven for anyone, not with their own remaining land overpopulated to the point where people were migrating to Mexico. They were likewise better equipped to build war machines than use them, so it placed the European Union as the only force capable of fending off Pan-Asia.

After all, the other two factions only played at participating in World War III. Their militaries were a joke and the PAC would eventually come for them, one way or another. Assuming they could secure Africa.

A buzz from Sheffard's helmet drew his attention. He forced his feet to move under the weight of his boots, eventually picking the thing up and shoving it down over his head. He'd gotten used to the command interface, at least. Besides that, the noise was now intelligible, and it wasn't a noise at all. "Aster to Sheffard, Aster to Sheffard. Come on, Sir, put your helmet on, what if there's a sniper on the hill?"

If there was a sniper on the hill, a helmet wasn't going to save his head against modern sniper rifles. Besides, they'd picked this hill to hide behind because it was so steep a sniper wouldn't be able to hide behind it at the top. Sheffard refrained from saying that. "Go ahead, Aster."

"Sir, it's working." Aster was one for protocol, it was his anchor to reality like the Zeller-H rifle in Jackson's hands. "Give it a try."

Formal or not, Aster was a damn good engineer. Keeping his thumb over the push-to-talk button on the side of his helmet, Sheffard tentatively said, "Sat Track?"

Like a wish come true, the map on his head-up-display enlarged itself into a bigger, more detailed picture. The orbiting satellite instantly fed him its sweep of Shuhia Taiba, marking its best guesses for enemy locations based on a simple infrared camera. The enemy Titan was even farther out than he thought it would be, and it didn't take him long to count the dots. "Eleven. There are eleven Pancakes. Ten are on the ground."

"Christ almighty," Calhoun's face fell. Five soldiers was hardly something to write home about normally, but if it wasn't bad enough being outnumbered, five was enough to storm their own Titan and finish taking it down. It was already on its last legs. "How can they not know we're here? We never got close to their hardware."

"Their satellite must not be overhead," Sheffard said, pointing up to the sky. "I wonder why...doesn't matter." He put his hand to his helmet again, "Sheffard to Aster, come back up."

"Roger," came the answer.

By the time Calhoun got his helmet strapped on and they'd worked themselves down to the cargo deck, they were right on time to see Aster bring the gunship up and set it down. His parking job was altogether horrible; a good few feet of the tail hung over the edge of the deck and the Talon was crooked as hell. Then again, better to be safe than to land on the supplies they'd never had time to move into the cargo bay.

Or in the case of right now, they simply didn't have the motivation. Much to Sheffard's chagrin, Jackson didn't seem to notice the noisy gunship not far from where he was sitting. "Jackson. Hey, Jackson."

He put his hand to Jackson's shoulder, standing at arm's length and behind him as much as he could in case that rifle swung around on reflex. Jackson merely turned his head, though, a questioning look on his face, considering his lack of noticing that anything had changed.

Sheffard found it downright frightening. He preferred crazy men to look and act crazy. When they were normal, when they stared at him with the sad, puppy-dog eyes of every other soldier who simply hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, it scared him to death. "C'mon."

Not one of them waited for Aster; he had to run to catch up to everyone while they marched into the Titan, through the cargo bay. Around the reactor room they went, down corridor-3, slogging over the chunks of bulkhead and burnt electronics that littered the floor. So many missiles had hit the hull from those BLOC-3 silos across Shuhia Taiba, so many holes had been punched through the Titan's side, it was truly a wonder that the power grid still worked at all.

The control room would comfortably fit six people; it was roomy with four. It was also deceptively clean and well maintained, something Sheffard had seen to when he couldn't sleep during the night. He walked over to the map table and brushed off some dust that he had missed, revealing the same satellite readout everyone saw through their helmets. Much like their helmets, it also displayed the new location of the Pan-Asian Titan floating through the valley, now accurate thanks to the working satellite uplink.

"So, they're here," Sheffard said. He really didn't know how commanders always managed to sound dramatic when talking about situations. He also noticed something he hadn't caught when he was looking at the Titan on his own mini-map, out of the corner of his eye. "And...and they're hauling ass out of the valley."

"Huh," Aster leaned over the console. "Wonder why they're in such a hurry. Obviously they never figured out we're still here, but you'd think they'd repair their battle damage before moving on."

"You'd think they'd wait," Jackson's sudden words startled everyone. He was still holding his rifle close to his chest. "They...they should be waiting. If they think they've won, why aren't they waiting for the other Pancakes to come and claim the valley?"

Dead silence fell on the room. Sheffard walked over to the Ops station, frantically pressing buttons. "Bloody hell, I can't believe I didn't even...with the satellite uplink back, I bet money we have new orders."

It was always a pain to mix the Titan's equipment with the satellite hardware on the ground; after all, there should've been a general around with direct contact to allied command to tell them these things. That bit of protocol didn't help now, though. The information coming up on the screen, _that_ helped. Sheffard read it aloud. "All remaining units; pull out from current location; Coalition commencing attack on...oh, hell."

"What?" Aster said. He, like the other two, never thought to simply read over his shoulder. "What is it?"

"They're going after the power plant in Sidi Barani."

Again, Jackson came up with the magical missing piece of the puzzle. "They don't know the valley here isn't a loss. They think it's useless from all the combat."

"I don't get why they're hauling ass out of here," Calhoun said. "What's a banged up, undermanned ship going to do? Shef, what's the sit-rep in those orders?"

Turning back, Sheffard scanned the words further. "Uh...fighting is mostly on the ground so far...PAC hasn't gained much ground...Titans are coming in from the North overseas...oh, Christ. We're to the south. That Titan is behind our lines. It'll head right in and start chewing up our guys on the ground miles away from the power plant before they even reach the front."

"Unless we stop it," Aster shrugged. He didn't think it was an extraordinary thing to say, but it earned him some funny looks. Jackson laughed bitterly. "I mean, we're going to try to stop it, right?"

"Wait, wait," Calhoun raised a hand, perhaps thinking he could pat down the entire conversation and its absurdity. "Is this really necessary? Are we really going to try assaulting a superior enemy because we think _its_ assault on a superior enemy means anything?"

"Three to five minutes," Sheffard said. "That's how long it's going to take for our guys to realize what's going on, up to the ones on the front lines at the plant. Even if it doesn't do a lot of damage to the reserves in back before they realize they're under attack, everyone is going to be confused as shit for that long. And then they realize they're caught in a flanking maneuver. _Then_ Aster's engineer brethren waste all of their resources building BLOC-3 launchers away from the power plant, because they won't know it's shield is about to fail. Once that's done, they're going to send everyone with a pod or a gunship or a transport at the thing, because they're not going to know there are only five guys on it who will probably bail out beforehand anyway. But none of that matters, 'cause those first five minutes are long enough for the Pancakes to swarm into the canyon and get a foothold on the plant before anyone knows what's going on."

"Okay, so we attack it."

If there was one thing Sheffard loved about the European Union, it was patriotism. Not one of them men on the deck with him dissented to this idea once it had been established as the correct course of action. Not even Jackson, though he might have objected in a past life when he had his own country to be patriotic about.

That being said, the obvious disdain for committing the act, given the current situation, was evident on their faces. Not realizing that directions from higher up would never come, Sheffard was silent.

So, Calhoun spoke up. "So...right-o. Anyone got a plan?"

"Okay," Sheffard answered, trying to mentally prepare for this process. He really had absolutely no idea what to do, and he prayed whatever he thought of would be smart tactics instead of bad guesses. He looked at Aster. "Okay...what have we got?"

"Plenty of ammo," Aster said. He'd gone around and pillaged corpses the day before. "The gunship. The transport is still burning about a mile Northeast, and good luck finding a working one in all the wreckage. Um...there's a couple buggies down on the ground, I know there are working APCs in the valley but I have no idea which ones work and which ones are scrap. And you know, their shields are still up."

"Hmm." Sheffard ran the Sat Track scan again, this time touching the pad on the map table instead of giving the verbal command. He watched the line swipe across the map again, and it only now occurred to him that the Pancakes didn't have their satellite overhead because they'd moved it to Sidi Burana. There must've been a friendly one closer to the area, and so they still had their own eye in the sky. "According to this, they haven't fixed it...one more shot should take it down. Isn't Silo-12 still working?"

"It's working, yeah," Calhoun peered over the table, noting the single red dot next to the appropriate silo marker. "Pancakes have it, obviously. They'd have sent a missile up our tailpipe if they knew we were here."

Titans didn't actually have tailpipes, but he certainly got the point across.

Jackson was the one to notice that Silo-12 was fairly north in the valley; the PAC Titan would fly over it on its course. "And there's an APC with them...I bet money they're going to get back on their ship with the pods on it."

"Suppose their transport still works and the pods don't," Aster said. He already saw where Jackson was going with this.

Jackson, for his part, showed his wariness with the look of a man possessed. "I will fucking _make_ them work."

"Why are there five more of them just sitting around out in the open," Calhoun wondered, remembering where the red dots had been placed on the map. That one single dot on the Titan was obviously flying it, and there were those five around the missile silo...but the other five were grouped together in what seemed like a random, out-of-the-way place.. "They don't need to be around it. What are they doing? That thing give any better looks?"

"No," shaking his head, Sheffard wondered why Calhoun didn't know the answer to a basic question like that, after all this time fighting. "Need the UAV for that, and the second that starts flying around, they know we're still here, bye-bye surprise."

"I don't need to know what they're doing," Jackson's eyes looked glazed over, and Sheffard thought the man was still seeing the red dots on the map even now, long after the satellite had made its scan. "I just need to know where they are so I can sneak around them."

Calhoun let out a nice, hearty guffaw. Even Aster had a look of bewilderment about him, because Jackson was over seven feet tall and the idea of him sneaking anywhere was _funny._ Even with his active camouflage, the man was simply a much easier object to spot.

He was also highly successful with recon and stealth maneuvers; his record outweighed his physical 'shortcoming,' that was for sure. He gave Calhoun the dignity of another glare as a response. He talked to Sheffard, though. "You know I'm the only one who can re-program that silo after whatever they've done to it. You know I'm the only one who can get into that reactor without running around and blowing shit up until the doors open."

Following the train of thought, Sheffard put the plan together in his head, thinking Jackson would've made a much better leader if he wasn't a little cracked. "You're going to launch the missile...make a mad dash for the APC and take a pod up?"

A nod from Jackson. "Yeah."

"Won't work," Sheffard answered. "Nothing to stop them from following you...unless...unless the gunship gives you cover. If you're really lucky, maybe they won't even notice."

"Fine," Jackson nodded again. The solution wasn't as stealthy as befit his mode of operating, but it would get the job done. "Who's flying?"

"I'm the only one here certified," Aster raised his hand.

Not debating it, Sheffard turned to Calhoun. "Backup."

Also not one to argue, Calhoun, in turn, looked at Jackson. "Give me your rifle."

"Excuse me?" Jackson's eyes went wide, and he shook as though he would lose it right there. Calhoun might as well have asked him for his first-born as a ritual sacrifice.

"'Backup' means I'm sitting in the back of the jeep and then staying there while you turn see-through to do your thing," Calhoun said. "I can't shoot people from so far away they can't see me with my assault gear, and you are not jumping onto a Titan alone with something that does jack shit up-close. Give me your damn rifle."

After another second of delay, Jackson let up on the iron grip of his sniper rifle, and passed it over the map table. Once Calhoun had it, he un-slung his Baur and tossed it, watching as Jackson caught it perfectly in both hands. That done, he looked over the weapon now in his hands with curiosity.

"You have no idea how to use that thing," Aster said. It wasn't a question.

"Put the dot on the other guy's head," Calhoun answered, looking through the scope at one of the walls, "Pull the trigger. How hard can it be?"

Jackson was visibly fuming, but he didn't say anything. He just fumbled the clips holding one of his bandoleers off and handed it over. "Here."

Realizing Jackson was giving him the incredibly important spare magazines to go with the rifle, he dug the reloads for his assault rifle out of the pack on his hip and traded in due kind. "Oh...right. Heh."

Sheffard didn't like the idea of staying on Titan-667 and merely directing the action. There wasn't even much to direct, given the amount of people he was working with and the all-or-nothing plan they were going for. He knew it was the smartest place for him to be anyway; he could contribute nothing to the assault and someone needed to stay behind in case an enemy soldier found his way on-board. Their shields were down, after all.

Regardless, they had their plan. It was suicidal and downright ridiculous, but they had it. Now, Sheffard decided, was the time to be a dramatic commander. "Well, what are you waiting for? _Move the fuck out, soldiers!_"

Much to his surprise, no one laughed. In fact, they even left the room with a quick stride, and outright run once they were in the corridors. Aster made it to the gunship on deck faster than Jackson and Calhoun, but he had pre-flight checklists to run before taking it up for combat; he would be the last to leave.

Calhoun initially thought he would take one of the Titan's drop pods to the ground below where their FAVs waited, but he followed Jackson blindly, only realizing that the large American had a different plan for how to get down to the ground.

Looking over the edge of the deck at the ground below, Jackson said, "No reason to use the pods...be just our luck for one of those guys in the field to hear it."

"Right," Calhoun drawled. He hate jumps, he hated trusting the little parachute on his back. The whole idea of something so complicated made so user-friendly just scared him to no end. He wasn't a greasemonkey like Aster or a brooding tech like Jackson, but he always thought "user-friendly" was synonymous with "Less Functional."

He watched Jackson walk up to the edge, peering over to make sure there was enough clearance between Titan-667 and the hillside to land on soft ground. The man seemed to be a meticulous jumper, scooting up so his toes hung over the edge, reaching his arms up out to the sides, and letting himself tip over until he fell from the deck.

"Hell with it," Calhoun muttered. He ran the three or four steps to the edge and jumped off.

Jackson's chute wasn't far below him, and his own deployed just as it was supposed to. It pulled back into his rucksack just as it was supposed to the second that his feet hit the ground, too

Score one for technology, he thought. Jackson soon drove right over to him in one of the buggies, and Calhoun hopped onto the back seat instead of inside to the gunner's chair. The little machine gun on top was useless to them anyway, if anyone spotted them on the way, they were already screwed. Besides, he didn't trust Jackson's sanity any more than he trusted Pan-Asia to surrender in Sidi Burana, and he wanted the ability to bail out in the event Jackson had a flashback or something.

Jackson didn't take any of the dirt roads criss-crossing around Shuhia Taiba, he stuck to the rocky hills and tried to stay away from the valley as much as possible. He was comfortable with the distance he kept from that spot with the randomly gathered crowd of Pancakes, but the ride was so bumpy that he wondered if Aster was going to be angry with having another hunk of hardware to repair. The undercarriage wasn't going to be pretty.

The route was surprisingly easy to find. Jackson had one eye on the Pan-Asian Titan hanging in the air, hauling as much ass as it could through the valley. It slowly grew in size, but it was, in theory, a red herring. With one person aboard, there shouldn't have been anyone but the pilot, and the pilot couldn't see them coming up from the side.

The knowledge didn't help much. It was a pretty widespread urban legend that Pan-Asia had designed their Titans with a red motif, right down to the gravitic lifts, to look intimidating on the battlefield. Anyone with common sense would realize it couldn't be true since all the Titans used to be owned by civilian airlines and transport agencies. The thought resonated well, though.

Much to Calhoun's delight, the buggy finally came to a stop behind a hill not unlike the one Titan-667 was floating behind. It wasn't nearly as steep, though, it was easily climbable.

It just didn't seem that simple. Calhoun was used to charging in headlong and mowing down infantry with an assault rifle. He missed his Baur more than he cared to admit. "What now?"

Jackson, as the infiltration specialist, gave him a clear and concise answer. "Now we climb the stupid hill, genius."

"Oh, of course," Calhoun mumbled. He made faces at Jackson's back and trudged up the brown hill after him. He fell onto his stomach when Jackson did, crawling the rest of the way, sniper rifle held close. He envied Jackson carrying his assault rifle, not having to worry about carrying it with it strapped to his back.

It was short-lived envy. Jackson saw all he needed to see as soon as he got a look over the hill. "Christ almighty, this couldn't be better if it was rigged."

He didn't need to make out details, just the basis. The missile silo was between their position and the PAC APC, and the PAC soldiers were all standing around and leaning on said APC. He could see from here that the silo's computer interface was facing the hill, too.

Seeing a bit of a flaw in the plan now, Calhoun voiced his concern. "Isn't your IT-33 going to overheat before you can crawl over there? I mean, you can't fall down the hill without kicking up dust...right?"

"Yeah," Jackson was surprisingly polite now, "I have to crawl down the hill, but those rocks down there are close enough, I think."

"Oh," Calhoun blinked. "Huh. I'm really not cut out for this."

"S'okay," Jackson said. "Just keep your head down and don't move once you get my rifle pointed down there."

"What...do you want me to do?" Calhoun did as he was told, slowly nudging the rifle away from his arms, laying it on the rock and dirt so he could look down the scope.

"Hopefully nothing...let the air boy take them out if everything goes right...lets do this," Jackson glanced at him. "If I start shooting, you start shooting too."

"Right," Calhoun nodded.

"Just," Jackson started, but he drawled off into a sigh. "Make sure you pull the trigger on the pause between breaths."

"What the hell does that mean?" Calhoun blinked. He was ignored, and he could only watch Jackson pull the active camo switch from his belt and watched him fade from view into the simple, slight distortion of space before he set off down the hill.

Once he couldn't see where Jackson _was_ anymore, he went into a pattern of looking at the Pan-Asian soldiers through the scope and glancing down at the rock formation at the foot of the hill, waiting for Jackson to reappear. It seemed to take forever, and he could tell the Pancakes were goofing off, not expecting anything to happen until their Titan was reasonably close enough to take their APC's launch pods up to it. Two of them were still leaning against the vehicle, one was smoking a cigarette.

It was a sobering taste of what Jackson must've felt on his recon and sniping runs. Subtly, the sniper rifle became much more than a weapon; it became power and freedom. The power and freedom to end life from half a mile away, to put that little dot in the center of the crosshair over a man's head and kill him so fast he wouldn't even have time to realize he had been shot.

He wondered if Jackson ever thought like this, if maybe thoughts like this helped drive him to be the nutcase he was now. "No wonder he didn't want to give this thing up."

When Calhoun glanced around the valley to find the rise in terrain that Aster was hiding the gunship behind, he finally noticed Jackson shimmer back into view. He was curled up into a near-fetal position to keep his entire sizeable frame tucked behind those rocks, but he still managed to give Calhoun a thumbs-up.

Ten seconds went by, and then twenty. Jackson vanished from sight again, and Calhoun's eyes kept track of the distortion long enough to see him stand up and start walking out into the open.

Jackson had been right; it couldn't have been a better situation if it had been rigged. He didn't break a sweat as he trotted up to the silo. Sparing the PAC soldiers one last glance, he made his way to the computer terminal and crouched down to reach it, his camouflage coming off again.

The interface was a touch-screen, various 'buttons' set up on a display around a profile of the missile itself. There was no outward sign of tampering, no cables leading to a technician's portable service unit, no removed panels. God forbid the enemy had actually left the silo as-is, although Jackson knew that wasn't true already. If they hadn't touched it at all, the fact that it was still on meant that it's last missile would have fired long ago.

Fingertips playing at the 'buttons,' Jackson stopped abruptly when the distinct sound of sand and pebbles crunching under combat boots reached his ears. For a second, he froze, eyes wide with terror as his brain worked through the fact that it wasn't a loud, obvious sound. To hear it meant someone was three, maybe four steps away.

Fortunately, his active camouflage unit was only on his belt and he reached it with milliseconds to spare, throwing himself against the side of the missile launcher because he managed to remember, through the adrenaline rush, that active camouflage was incredibly obvious with an electronic display behind it.

Sure enough, one of the Pan-Asian soldiers walked around the silo, peering around at the hill but not at the top of it where Calhoun sat. Turning, the enemy soldier looked over the silo, his eyes moving over Jackson, Jackson's eyes on a rock next to the man's boot out of fright that he would sense someone looking at him.

Sighing, the PAC soldier shuffled about, sending a radio message with an extremely bored tone of voice. The translation came across Jackson's HUD as "Still just dust and rock."

Jackson prayed, he actually _prayed_ to God that the enemy's radio message wasn't code talk for "I see a man under cloak sitting here, come over and kill him."

He didn't have time to wait. His IT-33 wasn't close to overheating yet, but considering the total time is lasted before having to cool down, that didn't say much. Slowly, carefully, Jackson rose to his feet once the PAC soldier turned his back again, mindlessly kicking at a rock and watching it roll across the ground.

The man paced around a little, and it was all Jackson needed. He fell in step behind him, his feet touching the ground in time with his prey's steps. Once the PAC soldier had ambled fairly close to the silo, obscuring himself from the view of his buddies, he made his move.

Dropping the IT-33 unit, Jackson let the hook it held onto his belt with catch it. His cloak fell, but he was still behind the enemy, and he was behind his cover as well. All at once, he covered the single step between them and drew his knife. He knew the enemy solider must have heard it coming out of the sheath, but it was too late. Reaching around, he pressed the palm of his free hand to the man's mouth and listened as he tried to cry out in shock before Jackson's knife slid across his throat.

The cry of shock turned into a gurgle of pure fear; the blood started to pour instantly and the doomed man tried to cry out through the hole in his throat, through the blood pouring down it, and through Jackson's gloved hand.

"Shhhhh," Jackson whispered into his ear, "Shhhhh, shhh."

He couldn't remember a time he'd done that and his victim hadn't immediately quieted down. He didn't know why it worked, only that it did, only that it was disgusting, but it worked.

Pulling back, Jackson slowly backpedaled while tipping the soldier's weight forward, gently dropping him to the ground on his stomach well behind cover, close enough to the silo that he only had to scootch over a little to reach the screen again. He spared the man's face a glance, saw his eyes darting around as if they could find some way out of his coming death. "Sorry."

A few touches to the screen and Jackson found himself in the configuration menu, and it brought all of his answers. The PAC technician who had mucked around with the silo had merely turned off the auto-firing sequence. Touching the "Options" switch under the fire control, Jackson dragged his finger down the expanded menu and selected the toggle.

Unfortunately, this prompted a password prompt. "God dammit," Jackson hissed under his breath. "I don't have time for this."

Another sound reached him, but it wasn't footfalls. Turning to look at the man whose throat he'd slit, he watched him flail his arm up only to have it fall back to the ground. His eyes still in disbelief of his situation, the blood pouring out of his throat so fast it made a puddle before the dirt could soak it up.

His arm moved again, and now it was obvious to Jackson that he was reaching for his belt. His belt that held a frag grenade. Throwing his leg out, Jackson tried to bring his boot down on the man's hand, but he missed. He still managed to get the desired result, though, his ankle pinning the man's arm down at the wrist. Even with Jackson's size and the reach it afforded him, it wasn't a strong position. The Pan-Asian soldier wasn't strong anymore, though, and he looked at Jackson with a dying, pleading look, as if he was begging Jackson to let him reach his grenade.

Jackson's response was simple. "Fuck you."

He was sitting awkwardly now, but all that mattered was that he could reach the panel. He turned back to it, seeing the password prompt again. Hitting the "Cancel" indicator, he said to himself, "Bet you didn't lock out the manual controls."

Going back a menu, he called up the targeting system and reached the desired screen. It was an exceedingly simple interface, it didn't require manual input of the target's coordinates because it automatically detected Jackson's helmet, uplinking and getting the data through NetBat. A targeting solution came on the screen, listed as if it expected to have more than one target. He touched that single item on the list, and the screen drew a button labeled "Fire" next to it. Reaching to his helmet, Jackson whispered, "Jackson to Aster. Light 'em up, over."

"Roger that," was Aster's reply.

"Sorry," Jackson turned back to his kill, but it was now an actual kill; the soldier wasn't moving, and his eyes were open but nothing was there anymore. "Huh." Turning back, he pressed his finger to the "Fire" button so hard the screen's image distorted. Immediately, he turned his cloak back on.

The living soldiers didn't have time to wonder about the missile launcher coming on line, its hydraulics hissing and smoke pouring out as the missile lifted off. The sound of a gunship hovering itself over the terrain and coming in their direction was far more noteworthy.

Aster wasted no time. Peeking out from behind the missile launcher, Jackson couldn't see him in the air, but he saw the results of his strafing run. One of the enemy soldiers went down, shredded just as he turned to get a look at the Talon swooping in.

The other, screaming something over his radio, made for the missile launcher in an attempt to find cover. This was Jackson's cue; he held his cloak on, running out from behind the launcher as the enemy soldier ran around the other side. He made for the APC and practically dived in, listening to more gunfire outside when Aster swung around to get a shot at his target.

His own radio confirmed the results. "Aster to Jackson; targets are down."

Shuffling down the narrow middle of the APC, Jackson let his cloak drop and took a breath. He turned into the gunnery pod facing the enemy Titan, intent on watching the missile impact. What he saw, instead, was a PAC soldier.

The realization that he hadn't noticed the lack of this man outside hit him shortly; he'd killed one, and there had been two more when Aster flew in. Of course; the fourth had made his way inside the APC just before Aster appeared, and now he was peering out of the pod's viewport, breathing so heavily that Jackson could hear it above the transport's machine rumble.

He must've been terrified, wondering what he could possibly do against an enemy gunship. Jackson didn't care; he un-slung the Baur and leveled it, no longer concerned about noise. He made enough noise to be noticed, too, but the enemy soldier only just started to turn around by the time he pulled the trigger.

Three shots were all it took. Jackson shuffled about and took the pod next to the occupied one, huddling against the side and peering out at an angle to watch the Pan-Asian Titan. He was just in time, his eyes following the missile for it's last second of flight before it hit home. The gleaming shields over the craft rippled as they usually did from impact, but they kept spreading, peeling away from the impact like they were taking the shield away from that one spot until so much of the hull was exposed that the shield just failed.

"So far, so good," Jackson said. He found the flight control pad in the pod, clicked on the Titan's cargo deck as the little mini-map displayed it, and pulled the ejection handle without a second thought.

Pod flight was a strange experience for everyone. Jackson had heard plenty of different reactions to it, his own initial drops in his EU career had been filled with a healthy amount of screaming. Now, though, it was a simple fact of life. It still scared the living daylights out of him more than getting shot at, but screaming wouldn't change anything.

He hit the deck running, cloak turned on once more. He'd chosen the PAC Titan's cargo deck instead of the maintenance deck, wanting to run straight in instead of taking the extra time to sneak through the maintenance vents. He figured his active camouflage made up for the direct approach.

There was no thought in Jackson's mind anymore; he just ran, turning into the closest corridor once he was inside the cargo bay, listening to the Titan's automated warning system broadcast the intruder alert in deadpan Russian, a warning only the pilot could hear. Finally reaching one of the reactor control consoles, Jackson pulled his last Claymore and dropped it just outside the station.

It was a tricky choice, but hacking into the reactor room was going to take longer than actually placing the detpacks on the core once he was inside. If the pilot found him, he would rather be unprotected later than unprotected now.

He didn't even bother with the controls on the console; one glance at the screen told him the operating system was running perfectly fine, and he was never going to get through that to his goal of opening the doors to the reactor room. Mostly because there was absolutely no provision in the programming for doing such a thing; the reactor room doors could only be opened by maintenance workers in dry-dock, from outside, with equipment that contained hourly-changing access codes uploaded from PAC command. Titan-667 and her EU sister ships worked the same way.

There were provisions for emergencies, though, and the trick was fooling the explosive bolts on the door that one of those emergencies was happening. His first order of business was to put his hands underneath the edge of the console and lift, putting every muscle he could into it; his legs drew from the ground and pushed up, his back straining under the exertion, the lateral muscles taking the brunt of the effort.

Jackson was near to cramps when it paid off; the civilian designers had never found a need to physically secure parts like this, because civilian saboteurs wouldn't have the equipment to do what was needed afterward. No sooner did Jackson have the top half of the console swung up, giving him access to the hardware, than he dug through his infiltration kit for that very equipment.

Setting the pad and it's cables to the side, he reached in, careful not to touch the unshielded power converters drawing power from the very fusion core he could see through the window behind the screen. The data card containing the operating system was his target, and it should have been easier than getting the console opened. The awkward part was getting a good grip on the sizeable, thin polymer card. His gloves helped, but it was only large enough to get one hand on, and that wasn't enough to rip it through the clamps holding it in.

To make matters worse, he had to pull straight up or risk tearing the card off of the pins it plugged into the socket with, and then it would be impossible to plug his own equipment in. Quickly growing fed up, Jackson held into the edge of the opened console for balance, put one foot on top of it, and tried once more with the extra leverage.

The results would have been predictable if he'd paused to think about it. The card came loose suddenly, and Jackson had been pulling so hard that not only did it fly right out of his hand, but he went flying right onto his back with a nicely comical _thump._

Spending a good second staring at the ceiling and the lighting, Jackson blinked his eyes twice. "Get up, Jackson...you don't have all day _get the fuck up..._"

It was an actual, noticeable distraction, to suddenly realize how much he had been moving on reflex without thinking of it, jarred back into a normal thought process by the fall. Hauling himself back to his feet, Jackson grabbed his pad from where he'd set it down and nearly plugged the cable into the card's socket without thinking.

He caught himself, though, yanking the large power cord out of the main board with one hand before clicking the cable into place. It had been a miracle he didn't shock himself, having had no regard for caution around the power components. It was amazing that he had it plugged back in without incident a second later.

The final step was easiest of them all. His pad did most of the work, he only had to swing down the top of the console and navigate a little through the text only interface that it booted the system with. The keyboard was an actual tactile keyboard and not a touch screen like many things were these days, and Jackson found it interesting, the way the keys sprung back against his fingers and made noise.

A few commands later, and his pad beeped to tell him it could send the appropriate instruction. He tapped the confirmation on the touch screen, and ignored the way the floor rocked when the doors blocking off the reactor were blown apart by the emergency charges. He ignored the Russian voice pounding through the loudspeaker, yanking the cable from the console and stuffing the pad back into his kit even as he started running back down the corridor.

He had the IT-33 in hand again; the pilot had yet to find him somehow, and he wondered if it was some rookie, a scared kid babysitting the cockpit and now hiding in it.

There was no such luck for Jackson, though. The second he rounded the corner back into the cargo bay, he ran into what felt like a brick wall where there should've been empty space. He fell on his back still moving forward, his active camouflage turning off as he struck the deck. Out of the corner of his eye, Jackson could see the shape of another man form into his view, the man with his own IT-33 unit in his hand that he'd run into. The NetBat system in his helmet instantly put a hostile indicator over him on the head-up-display, a red dot appearing on the minimap that was pointless given their proximity. Belatedly, Jackson realized that the PAC soldier had probably searched every corridor for him, somehow missing the intruder alert.

Half Jackson's size, the enemy soldier got up first. He lacked a rifle or any kind of appropriate weapon, and the fact that he was carrying an IT-33 made Jackson think he was a sniper who hadn't bothered to bring his rifle around the cramped corridors.

Finding himself being tackled back to the ground after he sat up, Calhoun's Baur tumbling out of his hands and over the guardrail to the lower cargo bay a meter below, Jackson stopped thinking about it. He had hands around his neck, and after a single choked gag, he'd had quite enough of it.

He stopped trying to pry the PAC soldier's arms off and instead grabbed the man's sides through his fatigues, balling his hands into fists around fabric and, more importantly, a downright disgusting amount of skin.

Shocked and probably feeling like Jackson was ripping him to shreds with his bare hands, the soldier yelped in shock and lost his grip. Before had had time to do anything about it, Jackson threw him clear off, sending him rolling to the side

Finally, Jackson had the time to stand up. He spent precisely one second wondering why the guy wasn't carrying a sidearm and decided that he didn't really want to complain. Watching the PAQ soldier bend his knees and raise his arms nearly in front of his face, he let the guy throw a punch.

Basic CQC techniques weren't beyond Jackson. He let gravity compensate for his size and the trouble he had matching other people for speed, falling to the side and using the momentum to step around, grabbing the guy's arm as it turned, yanking him forward and punching him square in the nose with his other hand.

The resounding _crack_ was a satisfying noise. Taking advantage of the fact that his enemy suddenly turned into a rag doll out of shock, he grabbed him with both hands again and pulled. Twisting on his heels, Jackson threw the soldier clear over the guardrail and down the small, one-meter drop to the lower level of the cargo deck.

But he wasn't really paying much attention, or he might have noticed the PAC soldier's hand wrapping around the strap he wore to carry his demolition equipment during his wild grab for something to hold on to before he went through the air. He sure as hell didn't feel the clasp break and he was so used to the weight of those explosives that he didn't notice their absence, nor of the sidearm that hung there with them.

In fact, Jackson's excitement at having a free and clear run to the reactor with all of the time he would need to plant his explosives made him completely oblivious until he ran through the doors. Taking less than a second to stare at the generator dominating the center of the chamber, he reached up to his chest for the first RDX pack.

He was surprised to find nothing but his jacket. For an instant, he even wondered where his extra ammo was, until he remembered that he'd given the entire thing to Calhoun. That didn't matter, obviously. Realizing he'd lost the explosives, knowing, _knowing_ that he'd still had the bandoleer on not five minutes ago, he backtracked out of the core.

It wasn't had to find; the explosives were sitting nicely on the edge of the upper cargo bay, all of them still attached nicely to the strap with his sidearm, a couple of them dangling over the edge where he had tossed the PAC soldier.

The PAC soldier who was now walking back up the ramp, his knife drawn, oblivious to the firearm not three feet away from him on the floor. Blood poured from his nose in a way that reminded Jackson if slitting the other soldier's throat, and the look on his face was familiar. Something he heard Calhoun often whisper was what his own face looked like when he saw an enemy soldier, when he thought he was out of earshot

The look in the man's eye actually scared Jackson as he stalked forward, ready to strike. It scared him so much that he didn't move at first, until he decided, perhaps belatedly, that he did not want to be in a knife fight. He had neither the time on account of the other PAC soldiers in the valley who were doing god knew what, and he didn't have the inclination on account of not wanting to get cut.

So when he ducked around the first jab, he didn't try to retaliate; he dived passed the soldier to the ground, sliding just enough to get one hand on his detpacks from where he landed.

He wasn't fast enough; the PAC soldier grabbed him and fell on the way down, unable to hold Jackson's weight up. He tried to pull his knife around and slice Jackson's throat, but Jackson let go of his equipment, giving up on it for now in favor of throwing his arm in front of his neck, stopping him from getting the blade close enough. It sliced a gash through his forearm instead, but he didn't feel it.

His other arm pinned beneath him, Jackson tried to yank it out to no avail. He threw his weight to the side, rolling over with the PAC soldier still clinging to his back, not enough to shake him off but enough to free his arm and reach his equipment. He yanked on an RDX pack, tugging at the whole strap and letting him grab his pistol.

Wondering if the PAC soldier even noticed in his attempts to cut his neck open, Jackson aimed the gun behind himself, under his other arm, and pulled the trigger twice. The result was instant, the arms around him going limp instantly and the knife falling away.

He rolled a little more just to get the man off of his back, and Jackson stood up, finding that he was suddenly exhausted from the exertion. Glancing down, he saw that his shots had been right on the mark, both in the heart. He was dead already.

Grabbing the explosives, Jackson dashed into the reactor room once more and tore the first one from the strap, sticking it on right under the open reaction chamber where he could see the energy go through various levels of production and conversion. It was little more than a fancy light show to him, though.

No sooner did he have that first explosive planted then his radio crackled to life. "Aster to Jackson, Aster to Jackson, get out of there fast! You've got PAC reinforcements coming in, I couldn't stop them all!"

"Let 'em," Jackson said, never toggling his radio on. Three detpacks, four, five...and it was done. He tapped at the keypad on the last charge he set, setting the timer for forty-five seconds and clicking it on. He didn't feel a need to use the manual detonator; he just wanted to start running and get off of the ship before he was shot. If anyone came in here, less than a minute wouldn't be nearly long enough to figure out how to get the explosives off without prompting them to explode in the attempt.

Naturally, the second he ran back out of the reactor room, it was nearly into a PAC soldier the same way he'd run into the Titan's pilot. Neither of them being cloaked, though, they stopped short.

More importantly, Jackson found himself staring down the barrel of a gun, Calhoun's gun, retrieved from the cargo deck. It was so absurd that Jackson actually chuckled; they'd worried so much about being outnumbered, but the last PAC forces over Shuhia Taiba were apparently so lacking in _weapons_ that the four of them could've easily overrun them. Thoughts of killing them all and simply taking the Titan found their way into Jackson's head, and the idea was certainly amusing.

It was also impossible now. He didn't care much about losing what could have been an asset, because it was about to go down in flames anyway. What worried him was going down in flames _with_ it, and really, he should've been shot by now, but the Pan-Asian with his gun didn't seem able to pull the trigger.

He looked frighteningly young under the visor of his helmet, too. Jackson's concern ended at the automatic weapon in his hands, though. And at the gaggle of other Pancakes suddenly pouring in around him, two through the corridor on the left, one through the corridor on the right, and one more up the ramp behind the first. Slowly, he raised his hands, thinking that even if he could yank his sidearm from under his belt before anyone shot him, the little revolver only had four shots left anyway.

The one with Calhoun's rifle glanced at his comrades and, at a tilt of the head from what Jackson surmised to be their squad leader, he nervously hopped by their captive enemy and glanced back into the reactor room.

A few seconds later, he came back, and Jackson let his eyes skim over the translation his head-up display provided for the Russian that he spoke. _Explosives, Sir! He put explosives on the reactor core!_

Bombs that had less than a minute to go off, Jackson knew. He felt himself being yanked around, his arms falling as he tried not to fall before coming face to face with their squad leader. An Engineer, if he recognized the specific uniform correctly. There was more text to read when he talked. _Disarm it._

It was all Jackson could do not to laugh. Disarm the RDX packs? He'd _won._ Besides which, he wasn't sure he could do it in whatever time was left anyway. As such, his answer was as succinct as it was uncompromising. "No."

Not saying another word, the PAC soldier grabbed him again by the left arm. In one movement, he drew his sidearm, pressed the barrel a good five inches above Jackson's elbow and pulled the trigger.

It wasn't a loud weapon; the pistols Pan-Asian soldiers carried for side arms were small and held ammunition that was plentiful, not large. Having it smothered against his arm first, Jackson cried out louder then the gun did.

Stumbling back, he instinctively threw his other hand over the hole, wet with blood already. He didn't say anything, he couldn't _think_ of anything to say, no curse that would be enough and no plea that would change anything.

Not that he thought he _would_ beg even if it would make a difference.

In the end, it didn't matter. Before the enemy soldiers could threaten him again, the explosives went off. One, at first, and no one seemed to react. The second and third went off before they realized what had happened. By the time the last one exploded, the deck was violently shaking, throwing everyone off-balance amidst the noise of the hull shearing and the Russian shouting.

Jackson used it to his advantage; not so much the surprise as the lack of balance. He threw his shoulder as hard as he could into the squad leader, knocking the man flat on his ass, his pistol tumbling away. Not stopping to think, he pulled his sidearm and turned, firing as he started running down the ramp, away from the young soldier who'd already tripped.

The other two went down, and Jackson kept running, tucking his gun back under his belt and absent-mindedly regretting that he didn't stop for Calhoun's rifle. There wouldn't have been time, he was sure. And it wouldn't taken more time to bend down and steal it back from someone holding it, time enough for the others to shoot him.

This thought on his mind, Jackson was soon reminded of his wound by sharp pain going up his arm, but he didn't stop. Around the cargo he went, out onto the loading deck where he sprinted in a straight line. Here, he belatedly learned how he'd been ambushed; sitting on the deck was a Pan-Asian troop transport that hadn't been there before. It was obvious that those soldiers had been hanging in the valley repairing it, and they'd repaired it just in time. It didn't look flyable at all now, it was shot to hell all over again. He figured they'd landed just as Aster shot through the active defenses.

It didn't matter anymore, though. Jackson didn't jump, didn't put thought into his form, one second he was running and the next, his foot hit empty air and he was falling off of the Titan.

Looking up as soon as his chute deployed, Jackson marveled at the flames sparking up around the gravitic lifts, at the plume of smoke heading up into the sky as though the entire top of the Titan was ablaze. Holes punched through the hull as power relays destabilized or overloaded. All the while, the entire thing began loosing altitude. The big explosion that signaled finality happened just as Jackson's feet touched the ground, a blast that would have scoured the interior, cleaning it of life.

That was all he needed to see. Looking back down, Jackson let his eyes wander to his arm, where a line of red was staining the sleeve of his jacket below the initial splotch. He didn't try to move it at all, too afraid. Instead, he raised his other hand to the side of his helmet. "Jackson to Sheffard; mission success."

He didn't wait for an answer. Groaning, he unhooked his chinstrap and slipped his hand up to the top of his head, nudging the helmet off. He didn't realize his hand was covered in his own blood from grabbing at his arm until it smeared across his forehead and into his hair, but he was beyond caring. The helmet bounced once on the ground before coming to a rest. Lacking his visor, Jackson squinted against the African sun.

He never saw it coming, never heard the footfalls or even the parachute over the continuous booming noises of the Titan as it continued its smoggy descent. He didn't even _feel_ it as the butt of the rifle came down on the back of his head, not really.

He fell, though, right onto his face, the ability to move suddenly robbed from his arms and legs. A foot in the side turned him over onto his back, where the sun seemed even brighter, partially blocked out by the lone figure standing above him.

That didn't last long. The PAC soldier dived onto him, and Jackson didn't even realize what was going on until he felt the knife go clean through his rotator cuff. It was far too late to do anything about it, and it might've been the blow to his head that made it take so long for Jackson to realize that the ring his ears was his own scream.

It turned into ragged breathing, his throat raw before he ran out of breath. The hand of his attacker, the same one who'd had Calhoun's rifle, was shaking out of rage and not the fright he'd shown minutes ago. He screamed in Jackson's face, the Russian broken and scratchy, the shaking reverberating down the blade.

He scrambled up when Jackson didn't say anything. Calhoun's assault rifle trembling violently in his hands, the too-young PAC soldier tried to keep it pointed at least somewhere near Jackson's face. He spoke again, but it was stuttered this time, nervous, as if the adrenaline was wearing off.

Turning his eyes up and left, Jackson tried to read the translation, and found that he had no such luxury because his helmet was laying on the ground nearby. Suddenly, the knife didn't hurt anymore. Looking up at the soldier he was pretty sure was about to end his life, he said the only thing he could think of. "I'm sorry...I don't understand."

Straightening up, the soldier finally stopped shaking. The Baur in his hands wasn't pointed at Jackson's face anymore, but it was pointed at his chest. That was enough. The look on his face changed, too, and Jackson knew he was about to die. He felt odd that it didn't seem like much of a big deal.

A hole blew through the PAC soldier's helmet near the top. A web of cracks spread a few centimeters around, with the pink mist puffing right out the back of his head. That was the only change until the kid started to topple forward and the rifle fell from his hands and to the ground.

"Oh...oh shit," Jackson threw his good arm over his chest, letting the dead soldier land on it so he could throw him off to the side. Blood still dripped all over his face, missing his eyes but going up his nose and he didn't even think to close his mouth until it got in there, too.

His would-be executioner dead at his side, Jackson yanked the knife out and dropped it, pushing at the ground as hard he could, rolling away from the body and onto his stomach. He wanted to throw up, wished he could, but his stomach felt fine and he could barely move anymore. His arm wasn't bleeding as badly, but his own blood made him feel too warm.

Jackson didn't bother to look up when he heard the FAV approach and come to a stop. He knew it was Calhoun's footsteps he heard, knew that Calhoun must've seen some indication of his wounds when the footsteps became faster.

"Jackson! Hey, Jackson!" Stopping short, Calhoun turned back to the buggy. "Bugger. One sec, let me grab my med kit."

Once he came back, he set Jackson's sniper rifle down on the ground along with his first-aid gear. Jackson could see him crouched down on one knee, and Calhoun smiled at him. "Pretty good show. And hey," he glanced at the body nearby, "I told you I wouldn't have a problem with your rifle. You owe me."

Jackson started laughing. Despite how much it hurt for his body to quake like that, he couldn't help himself. He couldn't help himself when his laughter turned to tears, either. Much quieter, but he could barely breath.

Pausing for a minute, Calhoun didn't retrieve a painkiller from his kit, he pulled a syringe, shoved a sedative into the back, stabbed the needle through Jackson's leg and gave him the whole thing.

center /center

"I...I never even saw it coming," Aster had a dazed look in his eyes. He knew nothing was really his fault, but it didn't change the fact that he wished he could've contributed to a better result. "I never even _thought_ they were trying to get a troop transport off the ground. By the time I was close enough to shoot they were already inside and...yeah."

"Any of us should've thought of what was perfectly obvious," Sheffard shook his head. He leaned back on a stack of cargo crates. "Enemy troops don't sit in a valley to make a camp fire. Every one of us was just too thrilled with the idea that they didn't matter. Me, most of all."

"Right," Aster nodded. He sounded convinced, if not confident. "So...where are we on course for now?"

"Where else? Sidi Burana," Sheffard yawned. He felt self-conscious of it, thinking that he had no right to be tired when he was the one who'd sat in Titan-667 doing the commander thing. "We'll be in attack range in a couple days, on account of our damage. I hope to christ we get some replacement manpower on the way. A whole Titan's a little much for four."

That was a little heavy-handed. Sheffard knew full well that Titan-667 was on its last legs, a once mighty carrier of over a hundred troops and massive artillery to boot. Short of a stay in dry dock that would probably take more resources than building a new Titan, being in attack range of a substantial target meant a limited time in the air, at best.

Calhoun was plodding onto the cargo deck, something bundled under one arm. "More manpower? Are you kidding me? There's a _hole_ in the locker room. Two of the showers don't drain into the recycling system anymore."

"Yeah," Sheffard said. It was a good point, but sometimes, he felt like optimism was the only thing he had left. "I know."

Calhoun walked between them and over to the newly arranged crates. They didn't form a particularly specific shape, just a necessary one for Jackson to lay on top on his good arm, the other marred with bandages. He was almost completely curled up, apparently cold in the absence of his blood-soaked jacket.

Unfurling the clean one he was carrying, Calhoun threw it unceremoniously over him. Jackson didn't so much as stir, despite the cloth covering half of his head. Calhoun started to step away, but he rolled his eyes and went back, taking the time to arrange the new jacket as something halfway resembling a blanket. It just wouldn't do for the injured man he'd treated to suffocate because he was too sedated for his body to notice it wasn't getting oxygen. "Fucker's lucky there was another one his size. Gotta be a miracle."

"How is he, anyway?" Sheffard asked.

"He'll be fine," Calhoun waved him off. "The bullet went in and out, didn't touch bone. The knife tore up a chunk of shoulder, but...same deal. I put muscle re-growers on the wounds, so he should have full use of the arm by the time we're in combat again. It'll just hurt like a bitch."

"How lucky," Aster sighed. "Get shot, go right back out."

He'd never been shot before, but even then, it still sounded rather ghoulish. It was also the reality of things, and Calhoun was nothing if not pragmatic. "Yeah, well, what do you want? Get wounded, go home, thanks for serving but we can spare you?"

"Yeah," Aster nodded. "It'd be nice if the world was actually like that."

Chuckling, Sheffard reached into the pocket where he kept his cigarettes, only to remember he'd thrown them away. "How twenty-first century of you..."


End file.
